Noon’s Midnight Fault

Don’t blame the mechanical
Clock, nor the digital, nor
The cesium atomic,
Nor any other, even
Train timetables. They only
Socialized the already
Pulsing clocks of your neurons,

Molecular clocks of cells,
The diurnal, seasonal
Semi-regularities
Of heat and cold, sun and moon
And tides—in short, the whole world
Is one polyrhythmic nest
Conditioning your contexts.

You were never free of clocks,
Not in one ancestral life,
Not in any form of life.
All times are clock time and clocks
Are lives taking advantage
Of the least disruptive kind

Of change, the rhythmic, patterned,
Self-similar near return
Of change that proceeds, recedes,
And then changes a bit more
Near the same manner again.
Time is no historical
Invention, only renamed

And renamed, renamed again,
Which is how time moves with names,
Linguistic turn and return,
Ourselves all antecedent
To history as well. One
Thing names do, not quite clock-like
And not chaotic, either,

Is lie, and the lies are built
Into naming’s unique need
For temporal boundaries
More terminal than the waves
Or wave collapses offer.
There needs to be some fiction
Of an origin, if not

An end, which is where all lies
Begin. Clocks and calendars,
The historical versions,
Could only be invented
By modular compromise—
Counted ends and beginnings
Name one and the same, the same.